What I said on Sunday – 2nd Sunday before Lent


A little late this week as I have been away since Sunday on a conference, but here at last is what I said last Sunday.

John 1.1-14

On the wall of my vestry, amidst all the untideness and clutter typical of churchy vestries, hangs an icon. It is an icon of Saint John the Evangelist. And one thing that you will always see in an icon of Saint John is a book that he holds in his hands. Usually the book will be open – in our icon it is nearly closed. But if you look closely you can just make out enough of the words written in the book to recognise – if you can read Greek – the opening words of Saint John’s Gospel. The opening words of his Gospel are such powerful words – words that still, down the centuries, resonate – even though they may not be immediately understandable. John knew how powerful words could be.

I can still remember many of the playground rhymes and chants that I used as a child – I’m sure many of you can remember those you used as well. One of them, which I think was more or less universal, was “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Even at the time I thought it was a suspect saying. Continue reading →

What I said on Sunday – 3rd before Lent


Slightly late this week. I spent rather a lot of time yesterday shovelling snow and trying to get the car as far as the main road!

Mark 1.29-39

Those of you who have ventured beyond the door of my study will probably have noticed the icons that hang upon the wall. Icons, of course, are a feature of Orthodox churches and Orthodox worship, but are increasingly finding their way into the devotion of other Christians. One example I have here with me this morning. This is what is known as a travelling icon. It is a small, foldable, set of icons depicting Jesus in the centre, with his mother Mary on the left and John the Baptist on the right, and is designed so that it may be taken with you when you travel away from home.

If you are into art in any way you may have immediately thought – ah, that’s a triptych. You might not – but don’t worry, I’m about to explain what a triptych is. Continue reading →

Snow


As most people are probably now aware heavy snow is forecast for Sunday 5th. If necessary we will cancel the 8am and 6pm services so I wanted to give advance warning that this might happen. I will post here if we do as soon as we know.

New Bishop of Croydon announced


 The news has been announced today that our new Area Bishop of Croydon is to be the Revd Jonathan Clark SCP. Full details of the announcement, together with details of the new Area Bishop of Woolwich, are on the Southwark Diocese website. 

Presentation of Christ


Bellini, Presentation in the Temple
Today is the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, also known as Candlemas.
Lord Jesus Christ,
light of the nations and glory of Israel,
make your home among us,
and present us pure and holy
to your heavenly Father,
your God and our God.
Common Worship

What I said this Sunday – Epiphany 4


Here – a little late this week – is what I said on Sunday

Deut. 18.15-20; Rev. 12.1-5a; Mark 1.21-28

I’ve never been a great one for joining protest marches and rallies though, over the years, I have been on the odd one or two. But I’ve always been glad that I live in a country where we have the right to protest. One of the cornerstones of our democracy is the right to protest about things over which we feel strongly and the right to speak out against those in authority when we believe they are wrong. We believe that in a democratic society people have the right to speak out about issues that they disagree with, and the right to do that by gathering in public.

Sometimes those protests might be on a small scale – as when a number of us from the local community protested over the closure of the Marie Curie Hospice in 2009. Sometimes, of course, they can be on a bigger scale, such as the protest against student fees last November, which marched through the streets of London to meet up with the protest against corporate greed in the City of London – the notorious camp outside St Paul’s cathedral. Continue reading →

Four nouns in search of a verb


As I said in my last post, I was not at St. John’s this week. As it was the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity I had been invited to the United Reformed Church in Caterham.

Things are done differently there as you’d expect. I had to give my sermon a title which was Four nouns in search of a verb. I also had to choose three readings with introductions. I came up with these:

Zephaniah 3.16-end: The Father says “I will gather you together.”
1 John 4.9-15: The Spirit says “I will dwell in you.”
Matthew 18.19-22: The Son says “I will be among you.”

Here is my sermon on the the theme of Unity.

Education isn’t what it used to be! As parents, and now grandparents, my wife and I have both felt that, as we have seen our children and grandchildren pass through the education system. It’s not really true, of course, but we all feel from time to time that the way we used to do things was better in the past. I remember not long ago, one of our daughters was struggling with one of her children over his grasp of English grammar. The problem was that when we tried to help she didn’t know what we were talking about when we started trying to explain parts of speech, sentence construction and so on. And almost with one voice we both said: ‘The trouble is you didn’t do parsing at school.’ Continue reading →

What the priest I live with said this Sunday – Epiphany 3


I was elsewhere this Sunday and so Mother Anne-Marie was in charge at St. John’s. Here’s her sermon.

John 2.1-11

When did Christmas begin?

When did it begin, not this last year, which in the shops was probably September, but when did it originally begin?

Well, you might want to say “When Jesus was born of course”. Well perhaps – did they have birthday parties in 1st century Palestine so in Nazareth Mary and Joseph hung up balloons and sent out invites to Jesus’s fifth birthday party and thought of age appropriate games to play, or find a children’s entertainer to invite. I doubt it! As in many societies birthdays were not remembered or celebrated in the way that we place such significance on our birth date. So Christmas didn’t begin on Jesus’s first birthday. Continue reading →

What I said this Sunday – 2nd Sunday of Epiphany


Here’s my sermon from today’s Parish Mass. The Old Testament reading tells the story of the call of Samuel while the Gospel is the call of Nathanael.

1 Samuel 3.1-10; Revelation 5.1-10; John 1.43-end

There’s nothing worse than being with a group of people and someone tells a joke – and you’re the only one that just doesn’t get it. Everyone else thinks its hilariously funny and you just don’t get the punchline.

Every year during August Edinburgh holds its world famous festival, and long with the festival you will find the fringe – a range of additional shows that has grown up around the official festival. And in recent years there has been a competition, with a cash prize and  voted for by those attending, for the best 10 jokes of the Edinburgh Fringe. This annual joke competition is now so popular it’s reported in all the quality press – even The Times and The Telegraph. Now, I think I’ve got a pretty normal sense of humour, but every year I just don’t see the point of half of the jokes listed. Often it takes a while before I can even see why it’s supposed to be funny. Take the winning entries from the last three years – none of which I found funny even after I had understood the point of the joke. I’m going to roadtest them on you now.

2009 – comedian Dan Antopolski won with this one-liner: Continue reading →